The landscape, the crossing-point between man and nature, has been a key theme in visual culture since the start of the 19the century. Its image becomes the projection area for the esthetic, philosophical and ideological reference and metaphor of the human relationships to the world. Landscape painting, whose boom characterizes the development of creative art in the 19th century, brings to the world of images the ever more urgent real landscape, but at the same time, it constitutes the rigid stereotypes with image clichés. The clichés are at first primarily accepted even by landscape photography, which complements this scheme with the material perfection of technical depiction. For landscape painting, photography becomes not only a helpful and amply-utilized aid, but mainly a relevant counterpart that reminds of the very task of artistic depiction. Thanks to photography, landscape painting emancipates from the dictate of being bound to topography and discovers its own new schemes.
The publication illustrates this development of the confrontation of the representative works of essential authors of Czech landscape photography and landscape painting of the 19the century and beginning of the 20th century: Jindřich Eckert, Antonín Mánes, František Drtikol, Jakub Schikaneder, Karel Maria Chotek, Antonín Slavíček and others.

The book was published by the KANT publishing house in collaboration with Rudolfinum Gallery and the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague to accompany the exhibition held in the Small Gallery of Rudolfinum from April 22 to July 4, 2010.